I’ve been using Claude Code as my primary development tool for the past month. Not as a novelty — as my actual daily driver for shipping production infrastructure.
What I Use It For
- Terraform IaC — writing, reviewing, and debugging HCL across two repos
- Lambda functions — Node.js handlers for Discord interactions, digest dispatching, cost reporting
- Test suites — 180 unit tests with 95%+ coverage, written in a single session
- Research — deep-diving into Discord API docs, AWS services, Cloudflare configuration
The Workflow
I follow a Research → Plan → Implement pattern. Claude explores the codebase, proposes a plan, I approve it, then it implements phase by phase. Every task gets tracked in beads (our issue tracker) with dependencies and acceptance criteria.
What Works
The context window is the killer feature. Claude holds the entire codebase in context — it knows every file, every function, every Terraform resource. When I say “add a custom domain to API Gateway”, it already knows the provider config, the existing resources, and the CI/CD pipeline.
What Doesn’t
It can be overly cautious — sometimes proposing workarounds instead of the direct fix. When that happens, “stop being lazy and get to the root cause” works surprisingly well.